By Genisis Luevanos, Taylor Hogan, Saundra D. Trujillo, and Mary L. Fahrenbruck, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico
The fourth and final installment of WOW Currents for June features Genisis and Taylor’s reactions Punching the Air by Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam. Both women are students majoring in Criminal Justice at NMSU and read the novel as part of their study of criminology theories in Saundra’s Race, Crime and Justice course.
In their reactions, both women convey strong emotional connections to Amal and the circumstances he endures throughout the novel. Genisis questions the idea of hope and reflects on the authors’ writing that humanizes incarcerated persons. Taylor reacts to the scene where Amal realizes that the color of his skin affected how he was perceived in the courtroom. Saundra and Mary reflect on the experience of applying criminology theories to young adult literature in a criminal justice course to close out the final post for June.
Genesis’ Reaction
“Hope that justice will be done to those brave men who stood up for their convictions.” -Albert Einstein
Society loves to tell those going through the trenches to have faith that things will get better, to have hope, and that bad times don’t last forever. I often ask myself if these words are used by people to help themselves feel better, if bad times do eventually turn around 180 degrees, or if not everyone gets justice and hard times turn into a hard life, filled with disadvantages left and right that lead many onto a path of destruction. At the beginning of Punching the Air all I could think of was how Amal’s name meant hope and, even though I wasn’t in his place, I had already lost my hope for him.
Punching the Air (Zoboi & Salaam, 2020) gave me a different perspective on inmates. Before reading the book, I never thought of an inmate’s dreams or their passions. I never thought to ask myself to look beyond the orange jumpsuit. In the book, Amal explained that the day he was processed into the system he memorized his inmate number, his crime, and his time, but he forgot his school ID number, his top three colleges, and his class schedule (Zoboi & Salaam). Zoboi and Salaam take us into Amal’s world where he is an inmate yet his thoughts and feelings are so purely human. Amal was angry, creative, and heartbroken because of the injustices done to him. He was not a picture-perfect boy, but he was innocent of the crime he was wrongfully accused of committing.
Taylor’s Reaction
Early in the story, Amal explains that:
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“Umi told me to wear a gray suit because optics. But that gray didn’t make me any less black. My lawyer didn’t make me any less black… Our mind’s eye and our eye’s minds see the world as they want to. Everything already illustrated in black and white” (Zoboi & Salaam, 2020, p. 9).
This passage is one that stuck out to me the most in Punching the Air (Zoboi & Salaam, 2020) because I felt that it was the authors’ way of saying that the world and society are created from the differences between black and white. In the U.S. it seems that we tend to separate ourselves mostly by race. Amal saying that there is nothing that he can do to make himself less black is a powerful statement because this implies that the rules of society constantly ask for the change of something unchangeable. We expect “acceptable” people to look a certain way, speak and act certain ways; a person can only be molded into what society defines as acceptable to a certain extent. Their ability to conform to this definition determines the extent to which they experience stereotypes and prejudice.
:We were a mob, a gang, ghetto, a pack of wolves, animals, thugs, hoodlums, men.” (p. 202). I felt that this passage represented the theme of the book, and what the authors’ hope the reader takes away. One could argue that Black youth lose society’s perception of innocence much earlier in life than youth of other races. Furthermore, Black youth are accused of crime and harshly sentenced more often than their white counterparts. It is much easier to justify oppression and inequalities when society applies negative labels to people in marginalized populations. Society assigns derogatory names to those individuals seen as less deserving of respect, opportunity, and a decent life. At the same time, society accuses those individuals who have been marginalized of making “wrong choices” when in reality they had limited choices to begin with.
Saundra’s Reflection
The final young adult novel assigned to students in the Race, Crime and Justice course was Zoboi & Salaam’s (2020) work, Punching the Air. Genesis and Taylor’s brief reactions about the novel are representative of most of their peer’s assertions and feelings related to the novel. The 2020 pandemic revealed more than the world population’s susceptibility to an invisible, deadly virus. Students in NMSU’s Spring 2021 Race, Crime and Justice course were grappling with their understandings of the relationship between race, ethnicity, crime and criminal justice during a time when social isolation accompanied by a lack of work and school distractions brought the reality of constant, historically, and structurally, sanctioned threats to Black lives to the front of the world stage. People world-wide were outraged at the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of police; Punching the Air provided criminal justice students an opportunity to discuss their pre-conceived notions of absent or anomaly ties between race, ethnicity, crime, policing, and punishment.
As we wrapped up a theoretically intense, often emotionally charged course, students reflected upon how fear of crime, and the use of criminal labels have been used throughout their lifetimes to maintain segregation and benefit the majority. We applied theories of crime alongside the social construction of race and ethnicity to better understand ethnoracial disparities across the criminal justice system; further, we brainstormed ways that, as criminology and criminal justice professionals, we could use theoretical development, research, and incorporating our expertise into policies and processes within the criminal justice system to simultaneously promote community safety and ethnoracial equity.
Mary’s Reflection
When Saundra and I began this cross-curricular investigation, I had no idea what to expect. I didn’t know if the novels we selected would have enough criminological substance for grad students to explore. Furthermore, I didn’t know if the students would baulk at the idea of using YA literature to explore criminology theories. After all, the approach we were using was unheard of as far as we knew.
I must admit, I was overwhelmed with students’ thoughtful discussions about each novel from a criminologist’s perspective. I listened with great interest as they discussed complexities surrounding bail money, setting bond for the accused, schooling juvenile detention centers, the telecom companies who profit handsomely from inmates calls to friends and families, and the list goes on. What appeared to be straightforward to me (e.g. bail money) was anything but straightforward to the students. Dropping down into the pages of the novel with criminologists was a different and exciting experience for me. I look forward to further exploring YA literature with a criminologists’ lens.
As we post our final entry for WOW Currents, I want to thank the students in Saundra’s Race, Crime and Justice course for allowing me to join them each week to explore criminology theories and to listen to their discussions about the YA literature using a criminologist’s lens. And to Saundra, I want to express my sincere gratitude for her willingness to embark on this journey with me!
Young Adult Literature Cited
Zoboi, I., & Sallam, Y. (2020). Punching the air. Balzer + Bray.
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- Themes: Genisis Luevanos, Ibi Zoboi, Mary Fahrenbruck, Punching the Air, Saundra D. Trujillo, Taylor Hogan, Yusef Salaam
- Descriptors: Books & Resources, WOW Currents